The assembly of electronic products in high labor rate markets has become less competitive as manufacturing has been moved to locations where low labor rate employees are easily employable. This approach reduces the labor cost for the product. An effective way for operations in high labor rate markets to counteract this disparity and reduce or eliminate this competitive disadvantage is to find ways to reduce labor content, essentially reducing the number of labor hours per product. An effective way to accomplish this is to create a machine-build or automate the product assembly process. One of the existing labor-intensive operations involved in circuit board assembly is having to hand-solder components to the circuit board. This has been the case for components that are used to interconnect one circuit board to another. One category of components that are an example of this requirement is called “connector assemblies.” These assemblies consist of a “male” half (commonly referred to as a “plug” or “pin”) that is soldered to one circuit board and a “female” half (commonly referred to as a “socket” or “receptacle”) that is soldered to another circuit board. After these two halves of a connector assembly are soldered to their respective circuit boards, the two circuit boards can be interconnected by pressing the male, pin half into the female, socket half.
Automating the soldering of an existing right-angle pin (see FIG. 1) has been especially problematic because, typically, a unique machine (robot) is required access and insert the pins into the circuit board. This adds considerable cost, both the capital cost of purchasing the equipment, and the recurring cost of needing a separate process to insert the pin. In addition, it should be noted that soldering the pin (instead of merely mechanically swaging or interference fitting to maintain the connect pin orientation) is required in high frequency and other applications to ensure electrical interference is not introduced into the circuit. Electrical interference can adversely affect the performance of the product.